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Topic: Freeamp and the Xing decoder (Read 4197 times) previous topic - next topic
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Freeamp and the Xing decoder

I stumbled upon the Freeamp music player software the other day, and I really like it!  It's a bit spartan on features when compared to Winamp, but the CPU usage is quite low.  I was curious to see if there was some cost for this good speed, and I found out that Freeamp uses a modified Xing decoder.  I know that the Xing encoder is pretty crappy... should I be concerned with the decoder?

Freeamp and the Xing decoder

Reply #1
Rob Leslie's tests show that freeamp is non-compliant with the Layer 3 decoder spec:

http://www.mars.org/home/rob/proj/mpeg/compliance/

There is nothing in the freeamp version history to suggest that this sort of thing has changed since 2.1 beta 5.

http://www.freeamp.org/text/CHANGES.txt

Although whether this is audible or not is a completely different question.

ff123

Freeamp and the Xing decoder

Reply #2
Hmm... seams like freeamp might not be so great as far as layer 3 mpeg audio compliance goes, but how seriously should the compliance test be taken towards real world performance?  After all, Lame (albeit version 3.86) isn't fully compliant according to that test.


Freeamp and the Xing decoder

Reply #4
Quote
Hmm... seams like freeamp might not be so great as far as layer 3 mpeg audio compliance goes, but how seriously should the compliance test be taken towards real world performance? After all, Lame (albeit version 3.86) isn't fully compliant according to that test.


Well, there's a big difference between 0.1 and 0.00001 (Lame is more than 10000 times "better" if you compare rms errors).

What does this mean in audible terms, though?  That's anybody's guess.  It may be like the difference between 0.1 and 0.00001% total harmonic distortion in amplifiers -- i.e., completely indistinguishable, although in principle one is much better than the other.

I'd certainly be interested in hearing about trustworthy tests of audible differences, though.

ff123

Edit:  BTW, both Freeamp 2.1 beta 5 and Sonique 1.63 have the same layer 3 test numbers on Rob Leslie's page.  I wonder if this means that Freeamp has the same bugs as David Robinson describes for tone sweeps in Sonique 1.51?

http://privatewww.essex.ac.uk/~djmrob/mp3d...html#sonique151

Freeamp and the Xing decoder

Reply #5
If you want a neat fuss-free MP3 player, take a look at 1by1 from Martin Pesch at:

http://www.rz.uni-frankfurt.de/~pesch/

For purely MP3 I think its great.

john33